all the little animals

WARNING: the first part of this post is about dead animals.

okay, this whole finding sick and dead animals thing is getting more and more upsetting. yesterday i walked to the post office to mail out dvds. everything was fine. on the way home, i stopped by a bodega to buy paper towels. as i rounded the corner to go back up the side street to my lair, i spotted a squashed pigeon in the road. this must have just happened while i was on my errands; the pigeon was NOT there when i'd passed by minutes before. okay, seeing an animal that has turned into "roadkill" is very upsetting to me. what was even MORE upsetting was that the pigeon's friend, family member, or partner was walking around and around it, pecking once in a while to try to get it to move. and who says that only humans grieve? sorry, but this living pigeon companion was walking around and around the dead pigeon, the way i saw aerial footage of a baby elephant circling around and around her mother who had just been killed by a poacher. obviously, elephants are much more intelligent than pigeons, but don't tell me that birds don't have feelings. it's why i won't eat your chicken or your turkey. it's why i decided, as i stood there in awe at this avian display of grief, to open my roll of paper towels and pick up the dead bird with some of them. i had to wave some cars around me cuz i was in the road. the living pigeon didn't back away until i picked up the dead one. it was still warm, it was bloody, and its intestines had come out of its abdomen. i tried not to look. i took the bird down the street to a grassy area and put it under a tree (the same tree where i'd put a dead baby bird a couple of weeks ago). a woman saw me do this and got on the phone to her friend. i hope she didn't call someone to throw the pigeon away. just let it go back to the earth, people. by the way, i STILL have not buried moritz. i'm soooo scared that the family upstairs will catch me digging in the front yard in the middle of the night. *sigh*. well, the little guy needs to go back to the earth where he came from, and tonight NEEDS to be the night. i can't put this off any longer. my dead animal experiences remind me of the film "all the little animals" with john hurt and christian bale. christian bale's character is the kind of boy i'd want as a partner: sweet, gentle, kind and sensitive. it doesn't hurt that he's incredibly beautiful as well. the kind of boy i want to be with would walk around a flock of pigeons, not through it. the kind of boy i want to be with would be upset at seeing a dead pigeon in the road. the kind of boy i want to be with would never drive like a fucking asshole, plowing into neighborhood cats, pigeons, squirrels, and other little animals. he'd get pissed off at such drivers.

i haven't had temp work all week. i have luckily had a very good week on ebay. i am praying that the sales keep on going well so that i make enough money to make up for not having had work this week. i hope they'll have something for me next week. i'm getting worried. if they don't get anything for me, i'm going to another temp agency. this is what i hate about temping. i was getting it regularly for the past few months until this week. :(

i have a couple of roommate prospects, i think. one for sure. i am going to meet the people on saturday. it's a brother and sister who live in inwood. they seem super-nice. :) i don't mind living in inwood. it's a very short commute from there to columbia. if we get along well, they'll want me moved in on july first. i can do that! i thought i had another lead from a friend of a friend, but her correspondence with me has left off, and i don't know why. well, i've used my extra time this week to keep packing up and cleaning. in my cleaning, i found a picture of andy and me together in high school. i e-mailed the picture to him. i couldn't help it: i also wrote him a long message. oh, mah gawd. i was reminiscing so much about how things were in our town and our region when we were little. it's changed soooo much since then. i bet i reminded him of things he hasn't thought about in YEARS. i feel so much like amelie for doing that for him. i imagine andy having a look on his face like dominique bretodeau did when he found his childhood keepsakes in the phone booth. i told andy about the soda shack dream and how it reminded me of the old things that have since been rotting or torn away from the landscape of our hometown. i told him about memories i have of him; memories from when we were in nursery school. i'm so glad i finally got those memories off my chest. i don't expect a reply from him. the dominique bretodeau expression that i know will appear on his face is enough of a reward for my good deed.

i'm listening to sam cooke's "live at the harlem square club" album right now. i feel as if i am in a soda shack on the side of the road down in the deep south, and he's performing for a small, intimate audience inside the shack. i'm drinking a grape nehi and fanning the humidity off of me. sam cooke died long before i was born, but as i lay here in my lair in new york city, in spirit i'm right up there in the front row, hanging onto every soulful word and note coming from sam and the band. i don't know what's perspiring more: sam's forehead or my soda bottle.

i've been alcohol-free all week.